1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for provisioning services to a terminal, and in particular to such a method system for provisioning services to a terminal in communication networks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With recent progress in communication technology there is a tendency that communication systems develop an increasing complexity. Namely, with the increase in the number of different communication networks, either based on different technologies or run by different operators, there arises a need to enable a user of a terminal to use access this variety of networks and services provisioned thereby. (Note that a user is represented by its terminal, so that services provisioned for a terminal actually are provisioned to the user, while however without a terminal those services could not be provisioned to a user.)
An approach for this has been conceived by some of the inventors of the present application and described in the conference contribution, “Service Architecture For Next Generation Networks”, IEEE Intelligent Network 2001 Workshop, May 6-9, Marriott Copley Place, Boston Mass., USA, session E.2.4 on Wednesday, May 9, 2001. (A corresponding U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/792,499, was filed on Feb. 23, 2001).
Current network developments generally tend to adopt the Internet Protocol IP and applications run “on top” of IP. For example, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) or WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) or HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) are operated, “on top” of IP when referring to the protocol stack. For subsequent discussions, however, a focus is made on SIP, while it is to be noted that other protocols may also be used in connection with the present invention.
Due to the increase in the number of network types and a desired interoperability there between, compatibility of the terminals with the networks, as well as due to the increase in the number of network operators, communication network systems are likely to adopt a structure in which several networks are over-laid on each other or, stated in other words, they exist in parallel. That is, for example, several network types such as landline networks such as PSTN, IP-LAN, WAN as well as wireless communication networks such as GSM, GPRS, UMTS, CDMA2000, WLAN, BLUETOOTH and even those to be developed in future may co-exist and offer different services to a user (subscriber) represented by the user's terminal and offer the communication technology that the user may access. Also, not only a single one of such networks of a specific type may exist in parallel but also several networks of the same type may exist in parallel and run by different operators or network service providers (e.g. in Germany, D1 and D2 GSM networks are run by different operators).
Also, with the increase in provisioning services by using e.g. SIP (or WAP or others), across different communication networks constituting a communication network system and/or even within a single communication network there may be plural service processing entities for processing/providing the services requested by/subscribed to by the user of a terminal.
The subscriber may configure several service profiles into the network and choose one of his/her preferences with the service requests based on time, geographic or network location, user (corporate, personal, spouse, children) and/or terminal device. Another interesting dimension with terminal devices is the variety of terminal devices, their capabilities and also the constant evolution of terminal capabilities. The capabilities of the terminal are also a determining factor in the service provisioning. For instance, even though a subscriber can use video services, he/she cannot use those services unless the terminal can support such features. The network must be aware of the user preferences at any time and terminal device capabilities for intelligent service provisioning.
A popular and developing trend in the current network architectures is to adopt a layered approach by abstracting different access networks. This is mainly to accommodate different access technologies and still to be able to provide application services transparently over all of these technologies. The network components providing user application services (service control components) must be aware of the terminal capabilities, subscription limitations and access mechanisms that the user may be using at any given time. Under such circumstances, however, routing of service requests is no longer “straight forward” and might even become ambiguous, which may cause problems that a requested service might even not become available at all due to routing problems. However, even if solving such routing problems by fixedly assigning a service processing entity per user/terminal, this will lower flexibility for the user in using the variety of services offered within the communication network and/or network system.